Background

In ViCaDiS (Virtual Campus for Digital Students) a wide range of ODL actors from EU and CEE countries focus on developing an innovative approach for enhancing international eLearning by moving the strength from the institutional learning environment to the personal learning environment (PLE) which focuses on students. It produces an instructional or pedagogical shift inside universities eLearning moving the focus from the education materials and technology to the user-student, to user generated content.

Digital students are defined here as young adult students who have grown up with an everyday use of technology and who are accustomed to using technology. As a result of their 'digitalness', they will enjoy enhanced interactivity and connectivity with others, and expect to learn in groups which may be physical or virtual. They learn for the pleasure and benefit of discovery. The digital students want to be able to choose what to do and when and they are demanding it 'now'. They simply 'think differently'.

Objective

The main objective is to build a virtual campus for digital students aimed at providing open educational resources and tools available and accessible for all students and to ensure the interoperability between the different eLearning environments used in the partner universities.

Aims

The goal of ViCaDiS is to create an attractive environment for all students within the Member States, using already existing tools which will be enhanced with new tools wanted by the new generation of students. An innovative multilingual ICT-based environment unique in Europe (as an international virtual campus), it will incorporate several open educational resources (library, glossary, external links, student projects, course activities), open educational tools (wiki, blog, forum, calendar, podcasting, instant messaging communication, audio-video conferencing over IP, RSS, mobile text messaging, mobile accessibility to ViCaDiS) and will promote social networking as an instructional method.

Activities

The project workpackages are:

WP1 - RES - Developing and testing of the ViCaDiS scenarioWP2 - ViCaDiS tools design and implementationWP3 - Piloting/testing and evaluation of ViCaDiSWP4 - Evaluation and elaboration of the Set of GuidelinesWP5 - Exploitation of ViCaDiSWP6 - Dissemination and Awareness raising of ViCaDiSWP7 - Project management of ViCaDiS

Outcomes

The main outcomes of the project are:

open personal learning environment methodology

ViCaDiS scenarios

ViCaDiS multilingual virtual campus: online and mobile environment based on Open Educational Resources

Tags Cloud

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission.This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.